KEY POINTS:
It would appear Hollie Smith can sing. Really sing. Big, high, deep, long, loud.
She can do it all and distinctively too. The whole country heard the proof in last year's local single of the year Bathe in the River which has gifted this album and Smith's career a perfect launch platform.
The Don McGlashan-penned track for the No. 2 movie soundtrack isn't included here, though echoes of its grand gospel designs can be heard - among the Wellington musicians and guests Smith roped in are Kilbirnie's Mission Community Choir. And like Smith's lead vocal on Bathe, there's plenty more where that came from on Long Player's nine songs - plus one ambling six-minute instrumental Reprise.
But while it's quite a showcase for her force-of-nature voice, Long Player does comes up short in some areas.
It doesn't lack for vocal gusto, jazz-blues-soul-funk muscle or the old-fashioned roots music values of the capital city's music scene.
Not quite enough of the songs are memorable for anything but the vocal performance or the playing behind it. And at times it can sound like Smith is but a guest star on her own album, especially on the aforementioned Reprise and the subsequent Own It when the microphone is given over to Rhombus MC Imon Starr's rhythmic ramblings.
The massed saxophone jazz excursion that is So Long - while adventurous - sounds a little incongruous, there's generic tropical funk underneath What I Say, and Philosophy might have hints of Marvin Gaye to its thinking but it's also got one of those lyrics about having to teach kids stuff ("the philosophy of soul" apparently) that comes off platitudinous.
Nor is it helped that its verse chords sound uncannily like Hall and Oates' I Can't Go For That.
It starts off well enough with the slow-burning pairing of the swampy I Can't Let You Down and the psychedelic-tingled soul blues of I Will Do.
The latter comes with an all-in final chorus that rivals Bathe for massed-voice thrills. So does the album centrepiece Provider which swings neatly between lights-down torch song to a big blazing chorus.
Likewise, the two end tracks find Smith on solid ground, whether it's the steamy blues of Come For Me Here or the gospel amen that is Be Whole in Thee.
Yes, Hollie Smith sure can sing.
And as a debut outing - not counting an earlier Celtic music record as a teenager - it's sure to make her our unavoidable Next Big Star. But it sounds like the balance between singer and songwriter is still weighted heavily towards the former.
Though when it fires, and when she hits those big, high, deep, long, loud notes on the better tracks, you also get the feeling this is the beginning of something special, the start of something major.
See Canvas in this Saturday's Weekend Herald for an interview with Hollie Smith.
Label: Soundsmith
Verdict: She's bathed in the river. Now she's heading to the bank
